Women’s Political Participation in Tunisia

 By Hania Bekdash, Graduate Research Intern, WI-HER, LLC and PhD student at Kennesaw State University

Since Tunisia uniquely stood at the forefront for women’s rights and education in the Arab world prior to its 2011 revolution, much discussion on progress and protection of women, their status, and political participation in the wake of the revolution has largely amounted to counting the numbers. With an impressive 23% of female ministers and 31% in the Tunisian Chamber of Deputies, Tunisia is still leading the Arab world and rivaling even western democracies.[i] Development agencies, donors, and media frequently use these figures to point to success.[ii] For example, they highlight the greater gender equity of participants in new constitution drafting committees, removal of the patriarchal Article 28 referring to the “complementarity” of the sexes in the new constitution, and reforms of the post-colonial Code of Personal Status (CPS) ensuring “vertical parity and alternation” for electoral lists in Article 24 of the Tunisian Electoral Law.[iii] The latter resulting in greater female representation in legislative bodies. However, gender equality in politics is about more than having an equal quantity of female representatives in legislative bodies, the make-up of the quantity also matters.

Political progress for women requires a contextualized intersectional approach to explore the correlation between gender, poverty, and power inequality not only between men and women, but also among women based on class, geographic space and access to socioeconomic development such as health, education, and electricity. One factor exacerbating the issue is the channeling of resources unequally both in the public sector, such as electricity, and private sector. Social stigmatization, health, disabilities, illiteracy, and rural marginalization have been recognized as the most prominent causes of gender inequalities in daily life and politics.[iv] Thorough gendered analysis attempts to unveil the unseen influences of power that create these structural barriers.

Women constitute approximately 50.5% of the potential Tunisian electorate.[v] Despite this, statistics show that female political participation in Tunisia is significantly lower in the interior regions than the coastal ones.[vi] This is particularly disconcerting when taking into account that voter registration from interior governorates is higher for women than men. Research findings confirm that MENA woman from rural origins correlate strongly with poverty and low education.[vii] In Tunisia, NGOs led by upper middle class women were the main actors developing campaigns for women’s issues. While the aforementioned successes were critical and well-deserved achievements driven from the bottom-up, as opposed to the former regime’s women’s rights protections delivered from the top-down, rural and less educated women felt marginalized from the process. Women with limited education and economic opportunities are more likely to support conservative parties, such as the former ruling Ennahda Islamist party, which often work against women’s causes.

Studies also find that a female’s propensity to participate in politics is directly correlated to her educational achievement and participation in the paid labor force.[viii] Tunisian women experience greater unemployment than men (43.5% for women/ 20.9% for men)[ix] for counted labor, while an estimated 75% of rural women work with no contract making the amount of unpaid labor unknown.[x] This, coupled with the trend of not feeling included in the urban elite women’s organizations, led rural and non-elite women to question a seemingly foreign liberal feminist agenda. Many of the advances for women since the revolution, as well as those in place by the previous regime, were criticized for only being accessible to a small elite group of women, a common problem globally. [xi]

Proposed solutions, such as increasing educational programs, making more scholarships available to women, and better dissemination of political information targeted at more rural populations may lead to increased political awareness. However, this would not automatically translate to increased female political participation. In addition to education, employment, as well as counting women’s unpaid labor and equitable distribution of resources such as electricity are necessary for an equitable voice in politics. Not only between men and women, but among women as well.

WI-HER supports an intersectional approach to female empowerment and women’s participation in the labor force and includes multisectoral analysis throughout their work. Through capacity building, gender integration, training and planning, we promote increased political awareness to rural as well as urban women from all social strata. Use of gender disaggregated data, and focus on cross-cutting themes, such as health and education, are critical to our success in this field.

[i] https://beta.ipu.org/resources/publications/infographics/2017-03/women-in-politics-2017
[ii] http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2016/6/tunisia-moves-closer-to-achieving-gender-equality-in-politics and
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/11/arab-women-make-slow-progress.html
[iii] http://fride.org/download/PB_189_Tunisian_women_in_politics.pdf
https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/womens-political-participation-Tunisia-FG-2012-ENG.pdf
[iv] https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/womens-political-participation-Tunisia-FG-2012-ENG.pdf
[v] http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/the-struggle-for-female-political-participation-in-tunisia
[vi] https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/womens-political-participation-Tunisia-FG-2012-ENG.pdf
[vii] http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/books/9789027267979-06kam
[viii]https://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/pnorris/Articles/Articles%20published%20in%20journals_files/Developmental_Theory_of_Gender_Gap_Inglehart_Norris_2000.pdf
[ix] http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/business/2015/09/tunisia-economy-unemployment-women-men-equality-study.html
[x] http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/books/9789027267979-06kam  and
https://www.awid.org/news-and-analysis/informal-work-tunisia-factor-be-included-strategies-addressing-gender-based
[xi] http://www.e-ir.info/2013/09/04/the-arab-spring-and-womens-rights-in-tunisia/